“…it is a confidence trick that has backfired badly because proceedings at the court has exposed the total lack of credibility of the petitioners and the NPP as a whole,”
These were the words of Felix Ofosu Kwakye, Deputy Minister of Information speaking on the issue of live broadcast of proceedings of the election petition being heard at the Supreme Court (SC).
The Deputy Minister who was against the live telecast said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the Danquah Institute (DI) advocated for the live telecast because they thought it will discredit the legitimacy of President Mahama; ‘but it has backfired, exposing their lack of credibility…their petition is frivolous and lacks merit and my view has been reinforced with happenings at the Supreme Court’.
The call for a live telecast of the court’s proceedings, to him, was advanced in a bid to deepen the doubts in the NPP’s minds about the legitimacy of President Mahama, because if on a daily basis, people are witnessing proceedings at the Supreme Court, the NPP assumes it will create a certain form of siege mentality and cause members of the public to doubt whether indeed this is the president that Ghanaians voted for.
He added that even though the NPP thought they were going to expose the president and the Electoral Commission they have rather proven to Ghanaians that they have no case.
“Through the court proceedings the allegations that they were initially accusing the president and the EC of, did not appear in the evidence that they presented to the Supreme. In the affidavits sworn to by Dr. Bawumia; in no where have they mentioned the fraud they were claiming in Yendi and other places. That is why I am saying that the petitioners lack credibility because they told what has turned out to be falsehood…” he told Suhiyini Alhassan on Radio Gold’s Alhaji and Alhaji.
He further pontificated that: “the idea of the live telecast as proposed by Gabby Otchere Darko was a confidence trick he did in a bid to foster the confidence of NPP supporters so that people will begin to think that if the NPP are that confident by showing the proceedings live, then they must have something substantive they are going to show to the public…The live telecast has succeeded in making a very frivolous case; bringing a frivolous case to prominence and that is why I maintain that is a waste of first, resources and time to sit and listen to the proceedings”.